Worth Remembering
by Abby Ebon
Summary: Prompt from rise your dead at comment fic; Burn Notice, Sam Axe, Sam never should have lifted the lid on Pandora's box...


**Worth Remembering**

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"They got it wrong, you know," Sam begins while not quite looking at Michael, yet knowing all the same that he has the others full attention, "it wasn't Pandora who opened the box. It wasn't a _box_ at all, really - it was what we called a _pithos__ – a storage jar." _Michael is looking at him as if he's a stranger, and dangerous. He's tensed up and reaching for the knife in his boot, because Michael is never unarmed. Sam is tied up, bloody, and maybe just a little bit broken inside. He doesn't even know if Michael ought to let him go or kill him while he's mortal weak.

It chills Sam inside and then out, the not knowing, the obvious distrust. Michael came to save him, but Sam isn't sure he wants to be saved anymore if they've forced him to change so much that Michael is _afraid_ of him. He doesn't know what the hell he thinks he's saying, but really, it isn't in his nature to think about these sorts of things _ahead_ of time. He's the father of excuses; he could be lost in the past as easily as the present he lives in. He doesn't even know if this is real, it's happened, yes- but maybe it isn't happening now, and Sam does not – can not - remember how it ends; if it ends.

Sam always remembers everything he's lived, and the present – what happens in the here and now – too often feels as if it's not really real. As if it's happened before and is only a memory. He will remember every moment of his life as if it's happening while he lives it; always. This is real, Sam knows, because Michael is here.

A wry sort of smile creeps over his lips, he meets Michael's eyes for the first time since he felt Michael come into the room. Michael doesn't flinch from his eyes, even though Sam knows they are terrible for a mortal to behold. It'd look as if liquid silver has swallowed up all the white, bled out by that sharp inhuman silver and the brown ought to look as if it's a smudge on a silver mirror, a mar, an imperfection of Titan eyes.

"Jesus…_Sam_." Michael murmurs under his breath, smothering a curse. It hurts –_physically fucking hurts _- to hear that curse, those words. Sam knows then that he's as far from the human he pretends to be as he's ever been.

"Wrong words…." Sam groans softly, pain seeping into his eyes as if he's drugged with it. Michael presses his lips together, wary only now of the power words hold over Sam. Michael reaches out to touch, because what mortal would not want to touch the divine? Sam knows he has to stop Michael, so he does the only thing he can – he speaks.

"_It was me_, Michael. I opened up that jar, and it killed her, my Pandora. I let all the little evils – and quite a few of the worse ones – into this world. Do you hate me? You want to know what else, Michael? I think I want to die. Isn't it so damned ironic?" Sam doesn't cry, not yet, because distance and time is no burden to his memory. It's his gift – and curse – and key to what he is in his very nature and name. Its part of what the younger gods have lost, what Sam is - this vivid truth of being a personification of a mortal's reflection of themselves or their world. Sam will live forever, because of what a mortal first so crudely understood of memory and thought.

"You're not going to die, Sam, I'm not going to let you. Damn-it, what the hell are you, Sam?" Michael asks carefully, not yet moving away. Sam is grateful for that, if nothing else. Sam laughs; it's a barking sound that has no mirth. Prometheus had told him he'd stayed sane by musing on the future and its promise, even as an eagle fed on his body day after endless day. Sam wasn't that strong – he couldn't do that.

"Aren't you going to ask who?" Sam wonders, grinning up at Michael playfully – it's a spark of himself he didn't think he still had, this playfulness. He is Sam, he is what he is, has always been both, and that will never change. So Michael knowing doesn't really change anything, but what he knows is only a bigger picture of a whole to work with.

"Epimetheus. _God_." Michael mutters, running a hand though his hair. He chuckles a bit, shakes his head, and gets back to work trying to get Sam out of the mess that had he's gotten tangled up it. Things will be alright between them, Sam knows now – because it's enough that his old friend still trusts him, with a little relief he realizes he can work with this. It will only take a little getting used to for the both of them.

With only a crude bit of cold iron crow bar, Michael breaks the chains of Hephaestus, Sam smiles when Michael grabs his arm - helps him to stand. Sam looks down to those chains, remembering. Yet with only a touch on the arm from Michael he comes back to the here and now. He knows he isn't the only one who's no longer sleeping though the mortal years, more promising - he isn't the only god who's lost power over the long age in which so many of the other old gods have slept and faded. He isn't alone, not with Michael still standing at his side.

It's worth remembering.


End file.
